Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org

Designing narratives and data

visuals in comic form for social

inﬂuence in climate action

Ray LC

*, ZijingSong

, YatingSun

and ChengYang

School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China,

Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA, United States

Climate change is dicult to connect with personally, because people

only regard the phenomenon as important if it becomes a perceived threat

to themselves. Arguments like statistics and policy debates are extrinsic

motivators, which do not necessarily align people’s own intrinsic motives

with those of climate action. Instead, narratives and visual communication

can inﬂuence viewers implicitly by the way they show and reinforce actions

and thoughts that align with climate action. In this design study, we used

comics created for human-level climate change inﬂuence to promote ideas

like future-based thinking, sharing of responsibility, and caring for each other.

We also created data visuals that illustrate future consequences of climate

change for the purpose of averting negative alternative realities. To see

whether our design can aect audience perception of climate change on the

human level of goals and desires, weshowed the comics to readers unfamiliar

with the themes of the stories, presenting them as manga about characters

and situations. The survey showed that data stories can aect the way naive

readers interpret narratives to align with pro-climate attitudes such as sharing

and future-vision, and that readers are focused on the human-level of the data

and story as opposed to the physical resource level. Speculative ﬁction and

data visuals provide a potentially eective way to inﬂuence individuals’ climate

change attitudes by showing alternative realities and attributes of collective

responsibility and planning-for-the-future as data stories.

KEYWORDS

design ﬁction, data comics, climate action, data narratives, data visuals

Introduction

Climate change is a major crisis of our generation, but public perception of it depends

on factors like individual habits, socioeconomic demographics, political ideology (Weber,

2016), socio-political motivation (Luo and Zhao, 2019), psychological distance (Wang etal.,

2019), personal relevance (Arıkan and Günay, 2021), and many other factors we are

beginning to unravel. In particular, it can bedicult to change the mindset of even climate-

conscious communities who are skeptical and apathetic about climate change. is

skepticism comes from xed attitudinal positions, skeptical voices in public media, lack of

trust in decision-makers, lack of support for personal beliefs, etc. (Happer and Philo, 2016).

TYPE Brief Research Report

PUBLISHED 27 September 2022

DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.893181

OPEN ACCESS

EDITED BY

Katharina Groß-Vogt,

University of Music and Performing Arts

Graz, Austria

REVIEWED BY

Gheorghe Popescu,

Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University,

Romania

Piero Morseletto,

VU Amsterdam,

Netherlands

*CORRESPONDENCE

Ray LC

lc@raylc.org

SPECIALTY SECTION

This article was submitted to

Human-Media Interaction,

a section of the journal

Frontiers in Psychology

RECEIVED 10 March 2022

ACCEPTED 01 September 2022

PUBLISHED 27 September 2022

CITATION

LC R, Song Z, Sun Y and Yang C (2022)

Designing narratives and data visuals in

comic form for social inﬂuence in climate

action.

Front. Psychol. 13:893181.

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.893181

open-access article distributed under the

terms of the Creative Commons Attribution

License (CC BY). The use, distribution or

reproduction in other forums is permitted,

provided the original author(s) and the

the original publication in this journal is

cited, in accordance with accepted

academic practice. No use, distribution or

reproduction is permitted which does not

comply with these terms.

LC et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.893181

Frontiers in Psychology 02 frontiersin.org

Climate communication strategies that use more personal

strategies like storytelling and visual communication, on the other

hand, are suitable for developing pro-environmental behaviors

and attitudes (Boyko, 2019). ese long-term behaviors for

social good need to activate intrinsic motivations, which can

develop when experiencing narratives aligned with particular

social purposes (Lc and Mizuno, 2021). Wetherefore employ the

genre of data comics (Bach et al., 2017), which combines

speculative design of ction (Dunne and Raby, 2013) and data

visuals in the form of more-understandable and non-threatening

comics to create more appealing and persuasive narratives,

magazine styles, annotated story-based data charts, partitioned

poster, and comic strips styles for the purposes of climate inuence.

On the physical level, climate change is connected to a set of

phenomena like material consumption, natural resource

exploitation, increases in population, and lack of policies in

sustainability. ese issues depend on policy debates that are

related to people ‘s pre-existing environmental attitude (Taube

etal., 2021). Instead of working at the physical level, weintend to

intervene at the human level, addressing phenomena like

immediate gratication, human myopia, taking comfort in

ignorance, belief in lack of individual inuence, and desensitized

negative outcomes. To promote long-term behaviors that align

with climate awareness using visual communication, weuse the

medium of comics, which have broad appeal to capture even

climate skeptic’s attention without appearing to preach about

climate change. Weuse data communication methods embedded

in the comic to diuse the diculty of the topic and reduce the

negative reaction to scientic content, using speculative data

visuals to narrate possible realities designed to provoke thinking

about consequences of individual actions and alignment of

intrinsic motivations with social goals for positive climate action.

In applying story design and data visuals for climate

persuasion, werecognize the importance of audience perception

to the design process. To help us understand (1) how story

structures and visuals may improve awareness of climate issues on

the level of goals and motivations, and (2) how particular data

comic interpretations can potentially lead to more eective climate

communication, weconducted a survey study of 60 readers to

assess the type of information they reported learned from reading,

providing feedback for improving the design process. Public

opinion on topics of a political disposition are subject to only

long-term changes (Sears and Funk, 1999), and such ingrained

opinions as climate change (Howe et al., 2019) would not

beexpected to change with a single reading. us welimit our

scope to illuminating a novel design strategy of narrative and

visual intervention with potential ways for improving the way the

public can perceive climate issues in the future to align with their

own intrinsic motives.

Data comics may bemore eective than other data-driven

storytelling formats to make data-driven stories accessible and

understandable, because the audience will be more engaging,

enjoyable and comics are ecient to highlight temporal

information or distributions (Wang, 2022). However, this

research did not focus on studying whether data comics have the

potential to create awareness and inuence attitudes among

audiences. In one study that used a comic book about rape

victims in India as a research object, respondents believed that

the comic can deliver a powerful social message to create issue-

awareness among younger audiences (Chattopadhyay, 2019).

Given the relative lack of studies in how climate communication

based on narrative and visuals strategies are perceived by naive

audiences, weaimed to investigate how people interpret climate

comics designed to inuence interpretation:

RQ1: How can speculative data comics aect audience

perception in terms of telling stories that align with particular

climate-positive goals or rather with education on resources

and policy?

RQ2: What can welearn from the way people interpret data

comics designed to inuence pro-climate action, in order to

create eective climate action communication?

Background

The connection between climate change

attitude and risk perception

e policies, attitudes, and capabilities of various countries in

supporting sustainability provides both opportunities and

challenges for enacting positive environmental change. At present,

worldwide interest has been devoted to energy use, the

proliferation of renewable energy, and the employment of

information technologies (Harrower, 2020). However, some

environmentally friendly policies do not always make positive

impacts. For example, carbon taxes may not have impact on

consumer energy decisions, but would aect the steadiness of the

nancial system because of the decline in fossil fuel production

and use (Ionescu, 2021a,b). Meanwhile, the pandemic inevitably

increases the use of plastics, due to discarded products like

disposable masks, gloves, and sanitizer bottles. Whereas a study

recommends approaches like increasing the recyclability of

plastics, using bioplastics, and developing new public-private

partnerships, the public should also have an appropriate

appreciation for the critical role the plastic sectors play (De Blasio

and Fallon, 2022). Environment innovation and green nance are

important drivers of sustainable development (Ionescu, 2021a,b).

us, raising public awareness of environmental protection, and

increasing green nancial support for sustainable energy systems

are needed for climate change mitigation.

Design ﬁction as climate communication

Design ction is a strategy for narrating potential futures by

varying a particular premise (Blythe, 2017), considering potential

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futures within social and cultural narratives (Bleecker, 2009).

Design ction can provide a narrative strategy for social inuence

by showing the eects of alternative visions (Moezzi etal., 2017).

Evidence suggests that narratives can strengthen the attitude-

behavior relationship (Rhodes etal., 2016), so reading ction may

help activate pro-environmental behavior in individuals who

already have strong pro-environmental attitudes. Research shows

that climate ction leads to greater public comprehension of

negative consequences caused by climate changes compared with

reading about research (Moser, 2016). Other research points out

that there is no strong evidence to show climate storytelling is

more persuasive than communicating evidence in real life (Jones,

2014). ey do not account, however, for ction purposely

designed for positive persuasion for actions that can contribute to

positive climate action as opposed to seeing negative eects of

climate change.

Comics and visualization in climate

communication

In scientic communication, illustrations play signicant

roles as visual explanations (Schreiner, 1997) that reect the

structure of the concept presented (Farinella, 2018). As

scholarly interest in visualization of climate change increases,

climate visual imagery has been used in television, lms,

advertisements, and artworks for visualizing past and present

climate states, and inspiring imagination about future states

(O’Neill and Smith, 2014). In addition, case studies indicate

that graphics can reduce climate dynamics to the human level

and put climate change action on the same level as the risks

people are willing to assume for a better life (Walsh, 2015). Such

visual communication, reected in the comic, has the potential

to convey the complexity of reality despite being more accessible

and widely available to the public (Darnhofer, 2018). Some

researchers found that science comics have the potential to

cultivate a continuing interest for the general public to learn

science (Lin etal., 2015). Narrative transportation positively

inuences the eect for hero characters, which extant research

demonstrates indirectly inuences the persuasiveness of a story

(Jones, 2014). Moreover, comics support contextual storytelling

based on aspect transitions that convey mood and sense of

place, allowing for implicit inuence through environmental

design as opposed to explicit forms of narrative inuence

(McCloud, 1994).

For the scope of this work, we focus exclusively on the

sub-genre of science comics, broadly dened as “comics which

have as one of their main aims to communicate science or to

educate the reader about some non-ctional, scientic concept or

theme” (Tatalovic, 2009). e scientic comic “may enable a wide

audience of non-specialist individuals, who do not typically seek

out science information, to engage with science related topics,

thus focusing scientic literature” to something the public can

understand intuitively (Spiegel etal., 2013).

Speculative data visuals and data comics

Research has been directed at creating data visuals that aect

viewers’ attitudes (Sheppard, 2005; Ballantyne, 2018). For example,

through the analysis of two climate diagrams, “trac light” and

“planetary boundaries” (Morseletto, 2017), “understandable,

meaningful and engaging” concepts in environmental science have

been presented. ese visuals encourage visual thinking, make data

and information expressive, help viewers recongure thoughts, and

facilitate communication with policy makers. Speculative design in

this form allows for a discussion of possible future states (Dunne

and Raby, 2013). us, viewers may reimagine thought-provoking

questions through visual examination, and the data wepresent

becomes “stories” connected to public awareness (Kim and DiSalvo,

2010). erefore, combining the inuences of design ction and

speculative data visuals may create more eective climate change

communication in a narratively persuasive form.

Dierent genres work better for dierent story types.

Choosing the appropriate genre depends on the complexity of the

data and the intended audience. Business presentations typically

use slide shows instead of comic strips, while television

commercials use videos instead of ow charts (Segel and Heer,

2010). Data comics combine the merits from other visual

storytelling genres that provide both the immersiveness of videos

and the interactive features of infographics (Wang, 2022).

Moreover, data comics utilize narrative concepts and visual

information of traditional comics to express data-related insights

designed to communicate complex scientic ideas (Wang etal.,

2019). us, wedeveloped data comics to express the narrative

aspects of identifying with climate action, transferring traditional

patterns of infographics presentation to narrative forms for

particular social purposes.

Methods: Narrative design

Story and headline writing

We rst specied particular design goals for climate change

action. ese goals are not related to physical resource arguments

like overconsumption or resource destruction, but rather human

psychological phenomena that weaddress here using persuasive

inuence. e phenomena wedesign against include issues like

immediate gratication, myopic vision over the consequences of

destructive action, the idea that an individual’s eect does not

matter to global issues, the idea that there’s comfort in ignorance

regarding scientic issues, etc. Since this research aims to reach

general audiences and audiences who may be climate change

skeptics, climate issues are not directly mentioned in the stories.

e work may beread covertly as simple a comic rather than a form

of climate ction. e titles of the stories also reect subtle cues

such as Redemption Park, New Revolia, and Every Flash of Light Is

the Sun of Another World, all of which evoke themes of rebirth,

community responsibility, and learning from an experience.

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FIGURE1

Persuasion through visual design in Sonia McDougal.

Comic design

We designed ve stories to address dierent human

phenomena propagating climate change. For example, one story

is Sonia McDougal, based on the story structure of “Rebirth” and

designed to dispel the idea of maximizing immediate gains over

future considerations. Wetake the typical elements of the tragedy

and turn the story plot into a more positive one in which the main

character is forced to change their ways and become a better

individual. e protagonists of this plot usually have redeeming

qualities to show that they deserve a happy ending. Like the

tragedy, the protagonist usually gets caught up in darkness and

deals with the threat growing in similar stages to the tragedy plot,

seeming almost non-existent at rst before becoming so

prominent it can no longer beignored. However, rather than let

the darkness triumph the protagonist eventually redeems

themselves, negating what would otherwise bea tragic ending

(Booker, 2004).

Sonia McDougal tells the story of a shoe business entrepreneur

named Sonia who must make a decision about her company,

whether to invest in long term research and development, or to

push the product widely to the general public. In her personal life

she takes the approach of immediate needs and gratication, as

opposed to settling down. en aer choosing to maximize prot

in her professional life, the business fails, teaching Sonia an

important lesson in the “Rebirth” theme. She realizes she should

consider a long-term plan and decides to take action in her

personal life, to nally settle down with her boyfriend. e

illustration uses a science ction comic book style which is more

to show the story theme: the yet-to-be-produced shoe which

works in any weather and can predict the rain using electronics.

e science ction look subtly points out a future-directed theme

in comic design, which is espousing future-directed over

immediate-directed lifestyles (Figures1, 2).

Other subtle cues abound in the visual comic. For example, to

show the research and development that involves experimental

shoes that survive in all weather, wedesigned a rain motif found

in several scenes in the story. To show the turning point in Sonia’s

life aer the business failure, weshowed eyes opened on a mirror

to indicate self-reection, when she was red from the company,

and weused two panels to express the eye moment to express time

ow and actually she stayed in the car awhile before leaving the

company downstairs. And comics panels make the unconnected

moments together, and mentally construct a continuous, unied

reality. So, the audience will use closure as a grammar to

understand the story. Moreover, the shoe business building is

drawn in a diagonal position to indicate failing, followed by eyes

closing, which signals the “Rebirth” structure that also hopes to

change the audience’s own viewpoint from immediate needs to

long-term views. ese moments establish the change undergone

by the character using aspect transitions as a way to apply

environmental storytelling to the work (McCloud, 1994). e

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“Rebirth” theme is emphasized in the recurrent scene structures

during Sonia’s two encounters with her boyfriend (Figure3).

Data visuals in comics

According to Bach et al. (2018), there are five major design

considerations for the purposes of data comics: visualization,

flow, narration, words, and pictures. In Sonia McDougal, one

panel with a graph was added to show the increase in

randomness of day-to-day rainfall, which is used to support

the idea of research and development for future gains of the

company in order to create smart rain-proof shoes (Figure4).

To keep the balance between data and context in our work

while pushing forward the narrative, a distribution map on

typhoon incidence in current and future times was given in

the storytelling line. Note that these are not real data, but

rather attempts to tell the story of future situations using data

as narrative. Hence the speculative data story approach

develops a hypothetical view of the world that then allows the

reader to extrapolate about the consequences of following the

direction of the main character in prioritizing current over

future considerations.

Since comics have the advantage of splitting complex

processes into less complex sections for easy understanding

(Cohn, 2012), they allow viewers to follow complex relationships

and scientic ideas. Two panels in New Revolia are representatives

of this aspect. e rst example is a graphic map that implicitly

explains the main reason for the shipwreck—the melt of glaciers

caused by global warming. In the turning point, a heated

discussion about the social values among two groups of characters

(scientists and bunnies man) occurred and one scientist put

forward a reasonable solution to distribute food equally. e

second example is the way the food distribution plan is visualized

using graphics that not only indicate the idea of the plan, but also

uses the form of the data graph in showing people and their

carbon footprints to narrate the idea of sharing of responsibility

in the context of the story.

FIGURE2

Contextual storytelling by visual design in New Revolia.

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FIGURE3

Using data visuals to describe future scenarios in the context of the narrative in Sonia McDougal.

FIGURE4

Using data visuals in New Revolia to describe strategies for sharing carbon emission responsibilities.

Magazine layout

Research has shown that what the public learns from sources

like school education or newspapers makes them generally believe

they have a good understanding of climate change issues (Pasquaré

and Oppizzi, 2012). us wecreated the comic A4 size newspaper

to mimic the style of a tabloid; A4 is widely used for magazines.

e issue includes 12 pages within which are found 5 stories

(Sonia McDougal, Redemption Park, VO, Every Flash of Light Is the

Sun of Another World, New Revolia). e text fonts are custom-

created to complement the comic-drawing style. In order to help

readers easily understand the content and panels, the designers set

the layout according to the “Z-path,” from le to right and

downward, which is preferred by new comic readers (Cohn,

2013). Since the dierent visual emphases to page layout and panel

composition have the potential to improve the dramatic eects of

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a story or plot, the character panels in every story are zoomed

out and emphasized to help the development of storytelling

(Figure5).

Methods: Reader study

An online survey is conducted to address RQ1, with semi-

structured follow-up questions regarding story-design and

perception to address RQ2 (see “Introduction”). e questionnaire

was divided into demographic information, reactions to Sonia

McDougal, reactions to New Revolia, and self-report of climate

attitudes. First, we collected individual-level variables of

participants (including age groups, gender and educational

background) to besure weget a range of dierent backgrounds,

because some studies found that women are more concerned with

environment than men and the level of education is positively

related to climate change concern (Arıkan and Günay, 2021). Aer

that, participants were asked to read the two comics and answer

several questions related to their understanding and feelings about

story plots, story structures, painting styles, layout, characters,

data visuals and environment graphics. At this point, we ask

people to interpret the comics purely on what the stories they tell

and the data it visualizes, without mentioning the climate action

purpose of comics. Next, we evaluate the eectiveness of the

comics and how readers interpret them in context of climate

change. We adapted previous work (Christensen and Knezek,

2015) for a self-ecacy scale about climate change attitude to

measure how pro-climate each reader is.

Participants were recruited and paid through the online

research platform Prolic (n = 60, 26 males, 33 females, 1

non-binary). e demographics of the participants are shown in

Figure6. Weused R 4.0.3 and RStudio 1.3 to process, analyze, and

plot the data. e participants’ short responses to questions about

interpretation of particular aspects of the story were then coded

using open coding and independently analyzed by two evaluators.

FIGURE5

Layout of Drizzle and design purpose for each story.

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FIGURE7

Quantitative results from survey on 1–7 Likert scale. Sonia.Resource—“How strongly does the Sonia McDougal story contribute to an

understanding of development of resources?” Sonia.Planning—“How strongly does the Sonia McDougal story contribute to an understanding of

prioritizing long term planning?” New.Revolia.Resource—“How strongly does the New Revolia story contribute to an understanding of resource

limitations?” New.Revolia.Sharing—“How strongly does the New Revolia story contribute to an understanding of sharing amongst diverse groups?”

Data.Leads.to.Understanding—“How strongly do the four panels with speciﬁc climate change data and facts contribute to your realization of the

urgent situation of climate change?” Encouraged.to.Learn—“How encouraged are youby the data shown in the manga pages to learn about

climate change?” Data.Leads.to.Interest—“How strongly do youthink this data in comics contributes to your interest in climate change evidence?”

Sonia Resource responses dier signiﬁcantly from Sonia Planning; New Revolia Resource responses dier signiﬁcantly from New Revolia Sharing

(Wilcoxon ranked sum, p < 0.05).

Results from the coding process are described in section 6.

Participant demographics are provided in Figure6.

Results: Quantitative

In general, participants reported being quite positive about the

way the design of stories and data visuals contributed to learning

about climate change (Data Leads to Understanding, Encouraged

To Learn, Data Leads to Interest in Figure 7). In the Sonia

McDougal story, there is a signicant dierence between the way

people perceived the climate change purpose (median 6, mean

5.6) as opposed to the edication over physical resource level

(median 4, mean 4.3; Wilcoxon ranked sums, p = 6.15e–7),

showing evidence that the story design led readers to consider the

idea of future-directed thinking (the core theme of the story) more

than the physical aspects of climate change. In the New Revolia

story, there was a signicantly higher understanding of the theme

of resource sharing (median 6, mean 5.53) over understanding of

resource limitation (median 5, mean 4.9) resulting from reading

the story (Wilcoxon ranked sums, p= 0.008902), consistent with

the view that the story design led to better understanding of the

human theme of sharing as opposed to teaching about climate

change on the physical level.

e Likert data is shown in Figure7, with the variability of the

data shown in the heatmap in Figure8. Note that variability in the

response to each question set are similar (interquartile ranges in

Sonia Resource, Sonia Planning, New Revolia Sharing, and New

Revolia Resource are all 2; variances in the respective groups are

1.57, 1.91, 2.16, and 2.42, Table 1; Sonia Resource vs. Sonia

Planning F-test; p= 0.8238; New Revolia Sharing vs. New Revolia

Resource, F-test; p= 0.8913).

e positivity about climate change can bedue to the self-

reported support of climate change, for the climate change

attitude scale revealed a general agreement of over 80% above 4

(1–7 scale) in every question in the survey, e.g., “How strongly do

FIGURE6

Demographic background in the survey study (N = 60, female = 33, male = 26, nonbinary = 1) broken down by Gender (left), Age Group (middle), and

Education Obtained (right).

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youbelieve the facts and data of climate change?” “How strongly

do youagree climate change will impact future generations?”

(Christensen and Knezek, 2015). is indicates that readers

already report highly on pro-climate attitudes, and hence the

story may not be tested against a population that are climate

change skeptics. Indeed as seen in Figure 6, the number of

participants over 50in our study was low, reecting the relative

lack of anti-climate change viewpoints in our study.

Results: Qualitative

Reactions to data comics: When asking about the story based

questions (including individual reactions to specic story plots,

graphs, the decisions of characters, future development of stories

etc.), participants obtained a better understanding based on

visual attributes of the data (including visual symbols, colors,

shapes and sizes). In particular, they mentioned the benets of

data visuals for adding credibility and acceptability to narrations

in comics.

“e smaller youare, the less yougive and should take.”—P3

“e graph is simple, but it adds credibility to the

comic.”—P14

“Food given based on how much each person will contribute to

CO2 emission, so they are trying to minimize emission.”—P17

“Easy to understand. e shapes of the circles are in dierent

sizes depending on the person, and that's the amount of

resources they should get in "box quantities.”—P18

“e rst graph supports Sonia's statement that weather has been

unpredictable, but also shows a level increase in the amount of

rainfall. e second image shows how the weather patterns

shown in the rst image have developed into storms.”—P44

However, some participants may reconsider the rationality of

stories based on the accuracy of data shown in comics. us,

designers should bemore cautious in selecting and presenting

reliable and scientic data in the storytelling context if they are used

to persuading traditional argument strategies. For instance, several

responses queried the fairness of the distribution plan shown in the

graph based on personal understanding and reection.

“e gures don't involve any specic gender.”—P36

“ey use pseudo science environmental charts.”—P33

“Not very scientic.”—P44

FIGURE8

Quantitative results from survey on 1–7 Likert scale shown as heatmap to show the variation in the data. Questions same as in Figure6.

TABLE1 Descriptive statistics for Likert scores for each survey question as asked in Figure6.

Survey question Mean Median Variance IQR

Sonia Resource 4.30 4 1.57 2

Sonia Planning 5.60 6 1.91 2

New Revolia Resource 4.90 5 2.16 2

New Revolia Sharing 5.53 6 2.42 2

Data Leads to Understanding 5.62 6 1.53 2

Encouraged to Learn 5.22 5 1.53 2

Data Leads to Interest 4.93 5 1.76 2

LC et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.893181

Frontiers in Psychology 10 frontiersin.org

ese comments show that readers understand the data parts

of the comic are not scientic, but are designed for the narratives

of the story. us the data visual is deemed ctional, since they

emanate from hypothetical scenarios that extrapolate based on

current climate change understanding.

Personal perceptions about climate action purpose: Responses

from participants who already have good climate awareness

suggested that data comics is a more engaging and provoking form

for viewers (P44: “I amalready well informed on the subject but it

denitely engaged my interest and I found it very thought

provoking”). However, several participants mentioned that data

may become exaggerated and ctitious during the process of

visualization (P6: “e data in the comics is more ctional than the

scientic data”; P8: “e comic maybe present some exaggeration

due to impact in the viewer, and also add some color and shapes”).

Although participants may feel confused about the accuracy of

data in comics and ctional stories, they still preferred data comics

as a creative climate change communication (P14: “e data from

the comic is very generalized and imprecise, but it is expressive and

attracts the reader’s attention”).

Limitations of data comics: Based on the analysis of

participants’ willingness to adopt pro-climate change actions, a

limitation of data comics was the length of stories. Participants

emphasized the signicance of the length of story lines which can

make audiences immersive in the story’s environment.

“e comics were too short to provoke a catarsis.” -P16

" … longer story lines to take one on a journey." -P10

On the other hand, participants also pointed out that they

realized the urgency of climate change not only from reading these

climate action comics (P36: “Not from the comic alone”). To

further support the eectiveness of data visuals in climate comics,

designers should think more about the connections between

narrations and specic situations in reality which may enable

users to take pro-climate change behaviors (P14: “It is important

to show specic situations with which the reader can identify and

imagine himself in the future”).

Discussion

To verify the validity of data visuals in combination with design

ction for the implicit inuence of climate change communication,

weexplored how speculative data comics can bedesigned to enable

climate change awareness and potentially nudge audiences to take

pro-environmental behaviors in a visually appealing and intelligible

way. Wedesigned and distributed a comic magazine that has the

covert purpose of climate action without advertising itself as about

climate change, the narrative contents of the comics are designed

for positive persuasion rather than showing negative facts. Wethen

evaluated the way the comic stories which presented human

phenomena can inform readers in regards to goals and motivations

as opposed to resource and policy data. Quantitative data showed

that participants were more likely to focus on the theme of future-

thinking in a story as opposed to physical issues like resource

limitations. In the qualitative data, several participants felt confused

about the rationality and accuracy of data comics and ctional

stories, highlighting the understanding of the narrative component

of the story rather than the scientic data. Although the ndings

cannot support that climate storytelling is more persuasive than

communicating evidence, it shows comics are more attractive and

understandable. is provides implications for designing stories in

the future: providing implicit cues for understanding alignment

with climate action rather than explicit arguments as they appear

to bemore receptive by audiences. In general, readers reported

positive inuences in climate awareness and alignment with

positive climate action goals.

However, regarding the majority of our participants reported

having a pro-environment perspective, our study demonstrates

that speculative data comics let people with pre-existing

environmental attitudes have more possibilities to activate

pro-environmental behavior. is suggests that to better evaluate

our design, weshould look for groups more antagonistic and from

more nations to climate action to better evaluate the implicit

eects of narratives and speculative data on climate change

attitudes, because government policies, green economy levels and

climate change educational eorts in dierent countries still

impact the formation of public attitudes about environmental

issues. ese further insights would provide better design

strategies for both data visuals and story design for particularly

needed groups to change pre-existing attitudes before they are

xed completely such as climate change deniers.

Conclusion

Speculative data comics with positive and implicit messages

have the potential for reducing the sense of distance between

climate change and the public. Comics are a more accessible,

understable, and memorable way of climate communication for

the general public. Our work introduced a novel design strategy

directed at inuencing the audience’s motivations and goals in

alignment with climate action, as opposed to education in regards

to the facts in climate issues. Werecognize the diculty in making

long-term changes in opinion, and the even greater diculty in

measuring the long-term eects of these changes. However,

we believe that design strategies for climate communication

exemplied here provide an implicit inuence that may, in the

long run, have an impact on human perceptions and actions in the

climate change debate.

Data availability statement

e raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will

bemade available by the authors, without undue reservation.

LC et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.893181

Frontiers in Psychology 11 frontiersin.org

Ethics statement

e studies involving human participants were reviewed and

approved by City University of Hong Kong. e patients/

participants provided their written informed consent to participate

in this study.

Author contributions

RL, ZS, and YS created the stories and the drawings. RL, CY,

and ZS created the gures. RL, CY, YS, and ZS wrote the

manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved

the submitted version.

Funding

e research has been partly supported by the Kyoto Design

Lab Researcher in Residence program.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the organizers of Data Art for Climate

Action conference for holding the associated exhibition where the

works were shown.

Conﬂict of interest

e authors declare that the research was conducted in the

absence of any commercial or nancial relationships that could

beconstrued as a potential conict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors

and do not necessarily represent those of their aliated organizations,

or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product

that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its

manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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